J.J. Abrams

He says he got the job directing Mission: Impossible III (2006) after Tom Cruise watched early episodes of Alias (2001) on DVD and loved them. The two started hanging out together and Cruise offered him the job.

Guerre stellari (1977) is probably the most influential film of my generation. It's the personification of good and evil and the way it opened up the world to space adventure, the way westerns had to our parents' generations, left an indelible imprint. So, in a way, everything that any of us does is somehow directly or indirectly affected by the experience of seeing those first three films.